Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

1940–1958

The original logo of the CBC, designed by École des Beaux Arts student Hortense Binette and used between 1940 and 1958, featured a map of Canada (and from 1940 to 1949, the Dominion of Newfoundland) and a thunderbolt design used to symbolize broadcasting.

1958–1974

In 1958, the CBC adopted a new logo for use at the end of network programs. Designed by scale model artist Jean-Paul Boileau, it consisted of the legends "CBC" and "Radio-Canada" overlaid on a map of Canada. For French programming, the "Radio-Canada" name was placed on top.

1966–1974

The "Butterfly" logo was designed for the CBC by Hubert Tison in 1966 to mark the network's progressing transition from black-and-white to color television, much in the manner of the NBC peacock logo. It was used at the beginning of programs broadcast in color, and was used until all CBC television programs had switched to color.

1974–1992

1974–1985

The fourth logo, known internally as "the gem", was designed for the CBC by graphic artist Burton Kramer in December 1974, and it is the most widely recognised symbol of the corporation.

The main on-air identification featured the logo kaleidoscopically morphing into its form while radiating outward from the centre of the screen on a blue background. This animated version, which went to air in December 1974, is also known colloquially as "The Exploding Pizza". This logo was originally accompanied by a three-note jingle performed on a vacuum-tube synthesizer (for the English version used by CBC Television) or by an orchestral woodwind section (for the French version used by Radio-Canada). This was later replaced in the fall of 1975 by the more familiar 11-note synthesized jingle, which was used until December 31, 1985.

1986–1992

The updated one-color version of the gem/pizza logo, created by Hubert Tison and Robert Innes, was introduced on January 1, 1986, and with it was introduced a new series of computer graphic-generated television idents for CBC.

These idents consisted of different background colors corresponding to the time of day behind a translucent CBC gem logo, accompanied by different arrangements of the CBC's new, orchestrated five-note jingle. The logo was changed to one color, generally dark blue on white, or white on dark blue, in 1986. Print ads and most television promos, however, have always used a single-color version of this logo since 1974.

1992–present

On November 1992, CBC updated its logo design to make it simpler and more red (or white on a red background). The new logo design, created by Swiss-Canadian design firm Gottschalk + Ash, reduces the number of geometric sections in the logo to 13 instead of the previous logo's 25, and the "C" in the centre of the logo became a simple red circle. It is now CBC's longest-used logo, surpassing the original incarnation of the Gem logo and the CBC's 1940 logo. It is almost the same as the Venezolana de Televisión logo.